Expansion as permanent political aim originates in business speculation, not political thought

Evidence

Expansion as a permanent and supreme aim of politics is the central political idea of imperialism. Since it implies neither temporary looting nor the more lasting assimilation of conquest, it is an entirely new concept in the long history of political thought and action. The reason for this surprising originality—surprising because entirely new concepts are very rare in politics—is simply that this concept is not really political at all, but has its origin in the realm of business speculation, where expansion meant the permanent broadening of industrial production and economic transactions characteristic of the nineteenth century. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 344

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the defining feature of imperialism: expansion as a permanent supreme aim, distinguished from looting and conquest, and traces it to economic origins.
• XREF: Directly feeds the connections to racialized colonial ‘Other’-construction and bureaucratic rationality in the Islamophobia field; also echoes the logic of endless accumulation in modern capitalism. — connects to: Capitalism’s growth imperative drives the bourgeoisie to force expansion onto the state
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 344